“Their Vampiric Majesties are very well aware of their obligations to our treaty of mutual assistance. And I need hardly remind them that if they attempt to break the said treaty then I will personally summon and inflict the penalties to which they will then be subject. Namely, I will flay their courtiers of their skins and expose their unblinking eyes to the raging sun; I will then destroy the Blood Palace and sow the ground with salt, after which I will hunt down the Vampire King and Queen, drive stakes through their unbeating hearts, and burn their inanimate bodies to a sifting of ash that will be blown away on the four winds. Such will be my wrath if their Vampiric Majesties should stand by their unwise decision to default.”
“Careful, warlock!” the Vampire Queen hissed. “Your less than human side is beginning to show.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” Oskan’s voice casually conceded, changing from the formal timbre of his address. “But that in itself has its uses; I don’t have to worry about things like a conscience or feeling remorse or pity. You see, even a seasoned warrior like Queen Thirrin might occasionally have a moment of weakness and hesitate before being as ruthless as a situation might demand. But I have no such problems; I’m happy to tell you quite openly that either you answer the call to arms or I’ll destroy you.”
“And what if we should choose to ally ourselves with Scipio Bellorum and his Empire? His attitudes and acts are those of an individual we could both admire and work with,” said the Vampire King calmly.
The werewolf laughed Oskan’s amusement. “Oh, please! When will you ever come to realise that Bellorum would never make an alliance with creatures he finds detestable, loathsome and, what’s more, the very embodiment of all the irrationality and superstition he hates. But all of this you know. We’ve discussed every part and particle of this situation many times. So come, make your decision, and this time make it final and irrevocable. I’m fast losing patience with your long-in-the-tooth attempts to free yourself from a binding treaty!”
The King took his wife’s hand and kissed it gently. “Well, my dear, it seems we have reached that point where we can no longer delay. What should we do?”
“Is there any real choice, my love?” she asked, stroking his hair and trying to ignore a rising sense of what she almost recognised as fear.
“None at all, it would seem.”
“Then let us muster our soldiers and march off to this war that’s neither of our making nor choosing.”
The King nodded, and turning to the werewolf he said, “Put away your threats, Warlock. We will honour this dishonourable treaty and fight in your war. We will be with you in half a month.”
“Make it ten days,” Oskan said through the mouth of the werewolf, and suddenly the creature slumped to the ground as the warlock released his grip.
Scipio Bellorum allowed himself the smallest smile as he looked now from the gunnel of his Sky Navy’s flagship, The Fiery Jack. He’d made sure spring had established its hold on the Icemark before he had allowed himself this first flight aboard one of the flying ships and now he was relishing the experience. Below him, the land looked like a beautifully drawn map. Every field, copse and river seemed to be a fraction of its real size, giving the illusion that the General could reach out, pick it up and drop it in his pocket. Which, in effect, was exactly what he intended to do.
There were, of course, disadvantages to the new method of fighting. At such altitudes the cold was intense, and the winds could drain life and warmth from an unprotected body within minutes. The Imperial scientists had designed special padded flying suits to protect the sky-sailors from most of the extremes, and their own natural toughness enabled them to work and fight in the new theatre of war with relative ease. But even so, there were still limitations to what the Sky Navy could do. Above certain heights the quality of the air began to deteriorate, and soon the strongest and most athletic fighters were left gasping for breath. But this wouldn’t be a problem for the Icemark campaign. The Sky Navy’s role would be one of low-level bombing at a height where the air was rich with oxygen and the screams of the injured and dying could still be clearly heard.
Ahead, the city of Learton was just broaching the horizon as the defensive walls and towers began to thrust up into the sky. This was the last of the Mid-Land cities to be attacked, and when it fell, the way to Frostmarris would be open. Bellorum was as happy as his oddly emotionless personality would allow. Beside him stood Octavius, who was as enthusiastic as his father about the new weapons. Sulla had chosen to lead the ground forces, which had been reduced to a minor supporting role in this stage of the war .
Spread across the sky, the entire fleet of sky-ship galleons swept forward in perfect formation, the crews scurrying to prepare the vessels for the attack on the city. On the deck of each ship, Bellorum could see the Captains issuing orders and scanning the flagship for directives, transmitted by semaphore. ‘Hold steady’ was the signal currently being given. Then, as the city began to loom larger on the horizon, the order to climb to greater heights was issued. Bellorum immediately felt the deck beneath his feet surge upwards as more gas was pumped into the huge canopy of the balloon above him. Now the wasp-fighters were launched, the dart-like craft spilling into the air as their pilots dived from specially constructed platforms that projected out beyond the gunnels of each of the galleons.
The faint sounds of the city’s alarm bells and clarions drifted on the still air, and Bellorum smiled to himself. Learton was as good as dead already. He wondered why the defenders even bothered to try. But then a lookout gave a cry and all eyes turned to the city.
Issuing from the walls rose an odd smoke-like billowing that swirled up into the sky. Immediately, monocula were levelled.
Vampires! Vampires in their bat form, and with them thousands of giant Snowy Owls, the allies and vassals of Their Vampiric Majesties! The crews quickly drew cutlasses and ran small cannon into battle positions. Bellorum could have screamed in rage. So much for the belief that sunlight was as deadly as poison to these hideous abominations of nature!
Such was the General’s loathing of these creatures, he’d neglected to study them as was his usual practice. Had he done so, he would have learned that they were of the subgenus Vampiris Arcticus, and like their close cousins, Vampiris Antarcticus, they had a high tolerance to daylight due to the long hours of sunshine enjoyed by their native regions during the summer months. No creature, even if it was ‘undead’, could sleep for almost six months of the year without taking nourishment, and so this species had evolved an ability to resist the poisonous effect of sunlight, enabling them to hunt and feed at any time of the day or night.
They came on now in dense formation, the loathsome bat faces of the Vampires clearly visible through the monoculum Bellorum trained on them. The wasp-fighters formed into fighting squadrons and swept down to meet this unexpected threat. The hideous screeches of the Vampires and owls began to echo through the air as they engaged. In the first few minutes dozens of the creatures fell from the sky, spiralling down in broken ruin to smash into the ground thousands of feet below. Bellorum roared in triumph.
The Imperial soldiers, though unprepared for a daylight battle with Vampires, had nonetheless come to the war equipped to take on the undead. They shot slender stakes of wood from their crossbows, and fired silver bullets from their muskets. But the Vampires and owls reformed and swept back into battle, dropping on to the flimsy canopies of the wasp-fighters and ripping them apart. The Snowy Owls tore and wrenched at pilot and fighter alike with razor talons, and soon as many fighters as Vampires and owls were falling to their death.
The crews of the galleons cheered and groaned as the dogfight continued before them, the advantage swinging first one way and then the other. But eventually one of the largest bats broke away, leading at least half the force away from the battle and straight at the sky-ships. Immediately, alarm bells rang and musketeers lined the gunnels as the sky-sailors ran the cannon forward, ready to fire. Bellorum drew his sword and strod
e to the spot where he calculated the first engagement would occur.
The cannons opened fire, belching out grapeshot and bringing down seemingly hundreds of the Vampire army. But still they advanced, and the muskets began to fire in disciplined order, rank after rank. The crews, armed with pistol and cutlass, waited as the hideous enemy slowly made ground against the gunfire that was keeping them at bay.
Soon they were dropping to the decks, metamorphosing as they fell into hideously pale soldiers in black armour. Leading the terrified crew, Bellorum and his son strode forward to meet the threat. Soon the deck was swarming and heaving with fighting soldiers. All about them the Vampires fought with loathsome elegance, and when they killed they tore out the throats of their opponents and drank the gushing blood. The crews of the sky-ships were almost mad with horror. They’d never confronted such monsters before; it was almost as though their nightmares had come to life. Even so, the customary discipline of the Polypontian army held good and they stood shoulder to shoulder, hacking and thrusting with their razor-sharp cutlasses at the abominations before them.
Slowly, slowly, Bellorum and his force began to advance across the deck, pushing the Vampires overboard and forcing them to transform into bats once more. But then an odd gasping roar sounded on the air, and all eyes turned to watch as a sudden gust of wind cleared away the musket smoke. One of the galleons was on fire, or at least its rigging was, and they watched as the balloon began to burn. Wasp-fighters swarmed all around it, but soon they drew off as the canopy gaped open and the ship slowly rolled over and began a long tumbling fall to the ground. Small figures could clearly be seen plunging to their deaths, thrown wide of the ship as it plummeted to earth and smashed into the ground, sending up a great billow of dust and debris. A second later an ear-shattering crack split the air, followed by a massive explosion as the ship’s entire complement of bombs blew up.
With triumphant shrieks the Vampires and owls renewed their attack, tearing out throats and splashing the decks with gallons of blood. Again and again Bellorum drove the creatures from his ship. Again and again they returned to the attack. His soldiers were beginning to tire, and here, thousands of feet in the air, he had no reserves to call on. It was then that the solution occurred to him. Of course! Quickly, he gave the order to release the gas from the ship’s canopy. He would carry out a controlled return to earth and get help from the ground troops. Slowly they descended, still maintaining discipline in the face of the insane attack of the Vampires and giant owls.
Bellorum quickly glanced out at the rest of the fleet and saw that they were following his lead. Now they would have more than a fighting chance!
Then all went quiet. Bellorum turned to watch in astonishment as the fighting halted and the Vampire soldiers parted to let a tall, elegant man step forward. The Imperial troops murmured suspiciously but held their positions, curious to see what would happen.
“I do believe I have the honour of fighting General Scipio Bellorum himself,” the pale figure said in perfect Polypontian. “May I introduce myself? I am the King of The-Land-of-the-Ghosts, commonly known by my rather . . . shall we say earthy allies, as His Vampiric Majesty.” He leaned with bored nonchalance on his viciously serrated sword, which dripped thick globules of blood. “You can have no idea what a problem you have caused my people. It really is too ungallant of you to continue in your attempts to defeat the Icemark. Didn’t you learn last time you attacked them that the House of Lindenshield really is tiresomely stubborn? Now, why don’t you just be a good little General and go and fight somewhere else? You know it makes sense. Then we can all go home and get on with our hobbies and interests and things.”
Bellorum glared at the figure before him with a mixture of loathing, contempt and outrage. Here was an embodiment of all that he hated about the Icemark and its region. Abominations of nature, superstition, witchcraft, and freaks that upset the balance of a rational universe. “I will never rest until I have rid the world of your pollution and the poison that you represent,” he growled. “For every one of your kind destroyed, the balance and order of the world is a little more restored. May this war continue until all your unnatural species have been expunged from the land!”
His Vampiric Majesty drew a tiredly resigned breath. “You know, Oskan Witchfather warned us that you weren’t really a fan of Vampires, ghosts and the like. Such a shame! For once, I feel that I have met an individual who almost approaches my own intellectual capacity, and yet his blind prejudice and boorish refusal to accept the astounding variety of the natural and supernatural worlds denies us the right to be friends. Oh well, on with the fighting, I suppose. Still, there are compensations: your soldiers do have such an exotic aroma, all sweet flesh and rare spices, and that, added to the delicious piquancy of their blood, makes this irksome war a rare feast for the vampiric palette!” And with the speed of a striking snake he leaped on the ranks of Imperial troops and ripped out the throats of three young men before anyone had time to react.
With a deafening roar the fighting resumed. Now the Vampire soldiers gained the upper hand over the exhausted Imperial troops, relentlessly pushing them back across the decks and over the sides of the ship. Screeching and raging, and moving with the elegance of loathly ballet dancers, the Vampires were unstoppable. But within five minutes the galleons were nearing the ground, and the support army led by Sulla Bellorum was advancing rapidly to their relief.
Warning shrieks rose up from the Vampires, and their king stepped forward once again. Raising his sword in an exquisite salute he smiled at Bellorum. “It was a pleasure to meet with a man of such inimitable refinement and taste. I can only lament that your chauvinism has blinded you to the fact that we share many virtues. So, until next time, General, when perhaps I’ll have the opportunity to appreciate the more sanguine aspects of your person.”
The Vampire King bowed, and leaped up into the air, where he transformed into a huge bat. His soldiers quickly followed and together they spiralled away, screaming and screeching in triumph.
Bellorum’s Sky Navy had been successfully grounded. Four galleons had been destroyed as well as hundreds of the wasp-fighters. And not one bomb had yet been dropped on the city of Learton.
CHAPTER 23
Charlemagne and Mekhmet were riding south across the desert. With them were an escort of fifty cavalry and a baggage train of twenty camels, and as Sharley turned in his saddle to look back over the twin lines of the column he felt a swelling pride. To his inexperienced eyes the glittering cavalcade and stately pacing camels looked like an army. But best of all, actually riding away from the city and its intrigues had brought with it an invigorating sense of freedom. With every mile they put between themselves and the complicated politics and plottings of the Sultan’s court, both Princes felt like a weight was being lifted from their shoulders. Soon they were chatting and giggling like a couple of schoolboys with no more worries than how much homework they had to hand in the next day.
Suleiman, completely adapted to the heat, trotted along in the blazing light as easily as if he had been strolling through an oasis, and beside him, Mekhmet’s beautiful grey arched its neck proudly. Close behind them a cohort of cavalry that bore the name of the Crown Prince gleamed and glittered in the sun. These were the elite of the elite, the bodyguard of the heir to the throne. Riding the finest horses of the Desert Kingdom, they wore chain-mail hauberks that flowed over each trooper’s body like the finest silk, and highly polished conical helmets not unlike the headgear of the northern housecarles, but topped by a vicious spike that rose six inches or so from the crown. In the fiercest heat of the day, these soldiers also wore loose surcoats of fine white linen over their armour, to prevent the steel of their panoplies from becoming too hot. And when the sun grew really fierce, they’d even remove their helmets and cover their heads with a deep hood.
Sharley still wore his now characteristic black robes, but Mekhmet had also presented him with a beautiful set of black armour, complete with a round cava
lryman’s shield. When Sharley had first tried on the helmet, his pale complexion had glowed beneath the black metal like snow under a night sky.From helmet to hauberk to shield, the armour had seemed as though forged from midnight and storms, starkly contrasting with the brilliance of the desert light. Sharley was now fully equipped as a warrior of the Desert Kingdom, but the young northern Prince was too shy to wear the armour while riding with the soldiers of the Royal Bodyguard until he’d proved himself in battle, so the armour was stowed safely away in the baggage train.
Mekhmet spent much of the journey describing the land to which they were travelling. “Trees and grass grow wild there,” he explained as though the idea of vegetation growing beyond gardens and oases was truly amazing. “It can sometimes be quite dry, as it will be at this time of the year, but they tell tales of a ‘rainy season’ when they claim that even rivers flow. I’ve never seen it myself, but I’ve no reason to doubt them. The Lusu people are very honourable, and never lie.”
Sharley nodded; obviously his own tales of the northern weather and rivers that flowed all year round must have stretched to the absolute limit Mekhmet’s ability to believe. “What are the people like? Are they good soldiers?”
“The best. Like the Desert People, the Lusu have a brilliant cavalry. Many years ago one of my ancestors attacked their land, and a great war was fought in which neither side could claim victory. Eventually, the Queen of the day, Swazeeloo, agreed to pay tribute to the Sultan and acknowledge him as her overlord. But to this day, nothing has ever been paid. Sometimes smaller wars were fought to try and extract the payments, but they always ended in stalemate. Today we know better than to even try, and besides, we have other things to worry about.”